Collected works of j s f.., p.9
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 9
“And I am really married!” said Frank’s bride, as they went back to the house of Mr. Boggs. “And to you, Frank. Let me pinch my arm to see if it isn’t a dream.”
“Kiss me instead,” said Frank, “and see if I’m real.”
And so, laughing and talking like two children, they reached the Boggs’ establishment, and were ushered by the giggling maid into the best parlour, where Mr and Mrs. Gammidge were already awaiting their arrival. Considering the short notice, Mrs. Boggs had prepared a most magnificent wedding breakfast, and Mr. Gammidge had actually procured a dozen of really good champagne from the best hotel in the place. Most brides and bridegrooms are not very hungry, but Frank and Tottie did ample justice to the good things before them, and occasioned a remark from Mr. Gammidge, to the effect that early weddings were evidently good for the appetite.
When Mr. Gammidge had concluded an affecting speech, during which Mrs. Gammidge and the maid sobbed audibly, the one behind her handkerchief and the other behind a tall arm-chair which came in conveniently, and Frank had returned thanks with much grace and feeling, the old couple, who had experienced twenty-five years of married life and the young one who had had two hours of it, adjourned to the sitting-room upstairs for a quiet talk. Tottie sat in the old-fashioned window seat, and looked at the sea beneath; Frank sat near her, while Mr. Gammidge and Mrs. Gammidge occupied arm-chairs close by.
“What time do the train go, my boy?” asked Mr. Gammidge, with a puff at an enormous cigar.
“At twelve o’clock,” answered Frank. He was going to take his bride to Southampton, there to sail for Havre.
“On’y two more hours,” sighed Mr. Gammidge. “No,” said Frank, afraid lest Mrs. Gammidge should again give way to her feelings, “and before we go, I have some news for you all. Tottie, my dear, give me your hand. There, now, I’ve got you, and you won’t run away if I startle you. Do you remember. Tottie, that when I asked you to marry me, I asked you if you could love a poor man?”
“Yes, Frank,” said Mrs. Carisbroke, wondering what was coming. “I remember.”
“I was a poor man then—”
“Who could afford to — but I wasn’t to mention that again,” said Tottie, smiling and interrupting herself. “Go on, Frank.”
“Tottie, Mr. Gammidge, Mrs. Gammidge,” continued Frank, holding his wife’s hand very tightly in his own, and looking very much like a prisoner at the bar. “I’m not poor any longer. I’m as rich as ever I was. My dear, you haven’t married a poor man after all.”
He felt Tottie’s fingers relax in his grasp, and saw her eyes open wide with astonishment and perplexity.
“Tottie,” he whispered, leaning forward till his face was close to hers, “you won’t love me any the less because I’m not a poor man, will you? And you’ll forgive me for not telling you sooner?”
He looked so much in earnest that Mrs. Carisbroke almost laughed in spite of her surprise.
“Of course I shan’t,” she answered. “But, oh, Frank, tell me why — why you pretended all that about your loss?”
“Yes, my boy, tell us,” said Mr. Gammidge. “Lord bless me — why the accident wouldn’t never have ‘appened but for that!”
“It wasn’t any pretence,” said Frank, “it was true. You remember that I went up to town for a week. Well, all my fortune until then had been invested in a certain security which my father had considered safe. When I called at Chatham’s, on arriving in town, I found them about writing to tell me that my money was as good as lost. I stayed a week to gain definite news. I got the worst news and came home and set to work as you know.”
“Like a brick,” said Mr. Gammidge.
“It was one of the luckiest things that ever happened,” continued Frank, looking at his wife; “it lost me all my false friends and gained me my real ones.”
“Frank,” said Tottie, “when did you find out that the money was not lost?”
“That very morning that I came in the cab to the circus and kicked old Seymour out. We called at the post-office, and Stevens brought me out a telegram which had just arrived from Chatham, telling me that things had come all right.”
“Ah — and yet you told me you were a poor man an hour later!”
“My dear, I didn’t. I asked if you could marry a poor man. You see I wanted you to marry me for myself.”
“As if I would have married you for anything else!” cried Mrs. Carisbroke. “What a nice thing to tell me — your wife. And now,” she whispered, sinking her voice so that her father and mother could not hear, “tell me one thing, Frank. Who bought the circus?”
“A professional,” said Frank.
“Tell me his name,” she said, “this instant!”
“Will you tell?”
“Not if you don’t wish it. But I will know.”
“Well— ‘Signor Crispini,’” said Frank, with a guilty blush.
Mrs. Carisbroke looked round. Her father and mother were putting their heads together at the end of the room. Even if they had been looking that way, I think she would have done what she did — which was to throw her arms round her husband’s neck and kiss him so tenderly, that Frank hardly knew whether he was in earth or heaven.
“My boy,” said Mr. Gammidge, advancing and shaking his son-in-law’s hand with much cordiality, “me and the old woman congratulate you. We knew you when you were rich and when you were poor, and you was always the same. It wouldn’t have made no difference to us, my boy, if you was rich or poor, but we’re glad things ‘as come all right, so we are.”
“After all,” said Mrs. Frank, a few hours later, as she and her husband stood side by side on the deck of the Havre steamer, and saw the English coast fading from view. “I am very glad that I have married a rich man. I shall always have something in my pocket now to give to any poor folks I may meet.”
And so they went away through Normandy and Brittany, and for awhile to Paris, and through delightful old towns of sunny France, and to the Riviera, until both were well nigh surfeited of the beauty of earth and sky, and yet not tired of each other. And at last they came back to England, and prepared to settle down at Ashford.
During the summer, things had been very busy at Ashford Park. The people from Sideboard, Carpett, and Dado’s had formed a regular colony, and had spun their visit out for weeks. When they finally disappeared, the house was ready for its occupants. Every room was in spick and span order; a staff of servants came, with a portly housekeeper, and with Stevens as butler and major-domo.
There too came very often Mrs. Ashburnham, a great leader of fashion, making almost daily visits of inspection. The Ashford people wondered whoever had taken the Park, that Mrs. Ashburnham should interest herself so much in it. They decided at length that some relative of that lady’s must be coming to the neighbourhood.
And then at last Mrs. Ashburnham revealed the secret. She called on Mrs. Folio, the parson’s wife, and told her that their young friend, Mr. Carisbroke, had recovered his fortune and had taken the Park. Mr. Carisbroke, whom people had almost forgotten, had, it appeared, been travelling on the Continent for some months. He was now returning, and he wished to signalize his return by giving a grand garden-party to all his former friends and acquaintances, Mrs. Ashburnham had kindly consented to do the honour for him, and would send out cards in a day or two.
“By night time,” said Mrs. Ashburnham to herself, as she drove away from Mrs. Folio’s door, “that old woman will have spread the news all over Ashford — which will serve our purposes very well.”
Mrs. Ashburnham’s prophecy was correct. Everybody who was anybody in Ashford knew before they slept that night that Frank Carisbroke was a rich man again, and that all these grand preparations at the Park were for him.
“Bai jove — ah,” said Captain Archdale, who learnt the news from a brother officer, and immediately hastened to the Seymour mansion with it, “this is weally strange! Mai deear Mrs. Seymour, I have some most wonde’ful news for you. Carisbwoke, you know—”
“What of him?” asked Mrs. Seymour. “Has he broken his neck at last?”
“Bai jove — no,” said the Captain, inwardly wishing that some such accident had happened. “No — he’s got all his fortune back — wich as ever again, you know.”
“You don’t say so!” cried Mrs. Seymour.
“Quite twue,” said the Captain dolefully. “The Park’s been fitted up for him. He’s coming home diwectly.”
“The dear fellow!” cried Mrs. Seymour. “How I long to see him! He was always such a favourite of mine, you know.”
“Ya — as, oh of course,” answered Captain Archdale.
“You may depend upon it,” said Mrs. Seymour, as she talked over the news with her daughter that evening, “that Frank has fitted up the Park — magnificently, I suppose, in order to marry you, Maude. We shall have him here in a few days, my dear, see if we don’t.”
Maude smiled. If Frank Carisbroke had got his own again, and had taken and furnished the Park, it could only have one meaning — that he was coming to offer himself to her once more.
The day of Mr. Carisbroke’s garden-party came off. Something like a hundred people were there, the Seymours amongst them. They examined the gardens, and went into raptures over the house. Everything was perfection. They nearly pulled poor Mrs. Ashburnham to pieces with their questions. But Frank himself was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Had he not returned? They were dying to see him!
“Then you must hold out a little longer,” said Mrs. Ashburnham, “for Mr. Carisbroke will certainly not be here until five o’clock. He arrives at the station at a quarter to five.”
At five o’clock the guests were assembled in much expectancy on the great terrace, Mrs. Ashburnham at their head. Somebody suddenly said, “Here’s the carriage,” and they saw a well-appointed Victoria coming up the drive. Before the hundred people could recover from their astonishment, it had drawn up, and Frank, tall and handsome as ever, handed out a remarkably pretty and elegant young lady, who received a most affectionate greeting from Mrs. Ashburnham. An old major from the barracks, who had only just come to Ashford, said that Frank’s companion was the handsomest and most lady-like looking woman he’d ever seen.
Frank, holding his bride by the hand, and with Mrs. Ashburnham at his side, came up the steps.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, bowing to the wondering (and in some cases discomfited) people, “allow me to present to you my wife!”
THE END
Andrewlina (1889)
First published in October 1889 by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. of London The Yorkshire Herald had a lovely way of summarising this novel:
“Within the two covers of this small book we have an honourable mill-owner on the verge of bankruptcy, a nephew suddenly returned from America fabulously rich, a murder, a supposed suicide, a mysterious disappearance, a sly, unscrupulous head clerk in love with his master’s daughter, an abduction, a ship-wreck, a splendid shrewd Yankee who unravels all the mysteries, a lonely cottage on the waste and last, but not least, Andrewlina herself, the frightfully misshapen, but incorruptibly loyal dwarf.
Her hideous and unusual deformity rendered her life wretched and her parents dying, she is cast upon the mercy of the world. One wild night she knocks at the door of the cottage on the waste, where lives the villain, Simon Murgatroyd, the wicked head-clerk and is taken in, warmed and fed. Murgatroyd’s only virtue is pity, a virtue which the author claims will eventually save the world and he so compassionates the poor, miserable, good-hearted girl that he allows her to live in his cottage. Andrewlina’s simple, faithful heart is his after that. Night and day she works for him and is rewarded by a kind word, though he insists on her accepting money and clothes. All his villainy, all his crimes, when she learns them, are nothing to her; he is still the only person in the world who was ever kind to her.”
Other reviews praised the book saying, “Mr Fletcher tells an extremely eventful and tragic story very simply and very well. Not for a moment does the interest flag and there is a good deal of excellent characterisation, as well as mere narration of exciting events… The book is certainly one of the best of its kind. There is no coarse realism, no necessary detail is omitted and the reader is sufficiently horrified. The style is straightforward and natural.”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
TO THE REVEREND
FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE, M.A.,
RECTOR OF ST. JOHN’S, LIMERICK,
AUTHOR OF
“SENT BACK BY THE ANGELS.”
“POOR FOLKS’ LIVES,” ETC.
MY DEAR LANGBRIDGE,
It seems almost unnecessary to write even a line in preface to a novel; but in dedicating the following story to you I should just like to say that I have had a higher aim in writing it than merely to amuse. In one of your ballads you make a character affirm —
“That though the devil has his faults, he’s equal virtues too.”
And my villain here, bad as he is, has also his virtue, and it is that virtue in which, I think, all the hope of this age, and of all ages, must lie — the virtue of Pity. I have tried to show how Simon Murgatroyd’s one good deed secured for him a most wonderful love — a love which put all sins and defects aside, and only remembered its own debt. Dr. Boyd-Carpenter has recently told us that the novelist has his mission no less than the preacher. I believe it; and what I have attempted to teach in this, I fear, very imperfect story, is the truth that —
“Our good deeds,
Done from pure love of good, perchance may wipe
Whole pages of poor human faults away,
And speak for us when, in that other world,
We lift our heads and plead, ‘I was but man!’”
Believe me, my dear Langbridge,
Always yours,
J. S. FLETCHER.
BRADFORD, YORKS., 1889.
CHAPTER I.
MARTIN AYLMER.
ABOUT SEVEN O’CLOCK on the evening of the 31st December, 1881, Martin Aylmer, a leading manufacturer in the busy town of Millford in Yorkshire, was seated at his desk in his private office, his head bowed upon his folded arms, his mind full of conflicting and painful thoughts. Trade in Millford had been bad for many years, and the smaller houses had gone down to financial ruin by the dozen. The larger and more stable concerns had managed to keep afloat, but the failure of a great company in a neighbouring city taking place at a critical moment, several of the leading houses in Millford were seriously affected and brought to the very brink of bankruptcy. Amongst these was the house of Aylmer and Aylmer an old and well-known cloth-manufacturing business, the sole proprietor of which at the time this history opens was Martin Aylmer. The fortunes of the house of Aylmer and Aylmer, unlike those of many of the Millford houses, had not been built up by a few years successful trading; It had made cloth and put its commercial relations on a sound footing in the days when Millford was little more than a village. Old Robert Aylmer, the original founder, whose portrait hung over Martin Aylmer’s desk, used to carry his cloth to the neighbouring, markets on horseback, never going further afield than Manchester on the one side, and Leeds on the other. A journey to Manchester, in fact, was regarded by him in the same light in which business men now view a trip from New York to Liverpool. To get to Manchester he had to travel on horseback, or by coach, through some of the wildest country in the North of England, taking a day to reach his destination, a day to do his business, and a day to return home. His grandson Martin’s buyers and sellers could go to Manchester in the morning, attend the markets, and return to Millford within a few hours of setting out.
For in the sixty years elapsing between Robert Aylmer’s death and the financial crisis of 1881, Millford had become a first-rate town, with all corresponding advantages. Its population in 1821 was sixteen thousand; in 1881 it was a quarter of a million. In 1821 it had no grand buildings, no railways, telegraphs, telephones, or Stock Exchange quotations; in 1881 it was the best-built town in Yorkshire, had four splendid railway stations, a perfect network of electric wire, all the latest improvements in telephonic communication, and could inform itself of the world’s news at a second’s notice. This was due of course to half a century of good trade. Millford had enjoyed something like a monopoly of the world’s custom in its own particular goods, and its merchants and manufactures had prospered wonderfully. If old Robert Aylmer, rising again from the grave where they laid him in 1821, could have seen those palatial buildings, with the great gilt sign “Aylmer and Aylmer” above them, he would probably have died afresh of wonder. He had founded the business in a tumble-down shed; his grandson carried it on in a palace.
But it seemed to Martin Aylmer, sitting despondently in his office on this New Year’s Eve, that the glories of the house were gone for ever. The fortnightly settling-day would dawn in a few hours, and he was short by ten or twelve thousand pounds of the sum necessary to meet bills and satisfy creditors. Once upon a time he would have looked upon ten thousand pounds as a mere bagatelle, and raised it readily at his banker’s. But now such a thing was impossible. His house and offices were heavily mortgaged, his securities were long since in the hands of the bank; he was, in fact, without resources, and face to face with ruin.
“It is no good,” said Martin Aylmer, raising a pale face at last, and casting a despairing glance at the portrait of his grandfather hanging before him; “it is no good! The evil hour is here at last. Well, it will be a bitter experience. And the worst of it is there’s not only myself to think for. There’s poor Rose. Poor child! poor girl! what will she think?”
